1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information retrieving process technique.
2. Description of the Background Art
In the medical field, the technique of forming a number of radiological reports as electronic data and storing the electronic data in a database system such as PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) is being spread. In the database system, the radiological report formed as electronic data and image data as an object of reading is stored so as to be associated with each other.
In a scene of obtaining a reference material at the time of diagnosis or generating data of representative cases, if similar images or radiological reports in the past can be retrieved on the basis of a certain image, it is very useful.
As a conventional technique of retrieving similar images on the basis of a certain image, a retrieval technique using a feature amount of an image is known. The technique, however, has a problem of low retrieval precision.
Other techniques are also proposed such as a technique of retrieving similar images by using both a feature amount of an image and metadata given to the image (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2002-259410 and 2005-100090), a technique for simply giving metadata to an image (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2000-298606 and 2002-175298), and a technique of retrieving a moving image in accordance with similarity of dynamic metadata (dynamic feature amount) (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-134589).
In the technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2002-259410 and 2005-100090, however, a troublesome work of giving, metadata to an image is necessary. In the technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-298606, although proper metadata can be selected from prepared options of metadata, the troublesome work of giving metadata is still necessary, the kinds of metadata which can be given are limited, and it is not flexible. In the technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-175298, metadata has to be entered before the metadata is registered as binary data, and the troublesome work of giving metadata is necessary. Further, in the technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-134589, it is very troublesome to enter retrieval parameters at the time of performing retrieval using metadata.